Marriage Rejected in Mexico
Author(s): Pamela Machado and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Assorted In-Sights (In-Sight Publishing)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/11/15
Wednesday was a difficult day for progressive Mexicans, according to the BBC. After the surprising Trump victory, which produced, as a consequent, the plunge of the Mexican Peso, the Lower House Committee rejected a proposal for a constitutional amendment, announced earlier in May in order to consecrate same-sex marriage and adoption rights.
Global news reports that President Enrique Pena Nieto’s lower house of congress voted the attempted measure to enshrine same-sex partners’ right to marry down 19-8. That is, same-sex marriage is not legal based on the vote by the Commission on Constitutional Matters. Edgar Castillo Martinez, the Commission Chairman for the Chamber of Deputies Chamber of Deputies, described the decision as “totally and definitively concluded.”
However, even with the 19-8 vote against the measure, the Supreme Court of Mexico, in 2015, stated unequivocally that the barring of same-sex couples from getting married was unconstitutional, but did not change the formal legal system. In that, it did not change the laws in the books. This did not change the fundamental framework for progressive change in the 2016 vote, even if the vote went in the favour of the progressive Mexicans.
And so a year onward, even with the hopes of the LGBTQ+, especially the gay, community in 2016 within Mexico behind the measure to make same-sex marriages constitutional, the 19-8 vote against went not-so much with the prevailing winds of change. Indeed, only some jurisdictions, such as the capital city of Mexico, remain bastions of legalized same-sex marriage.
The committee rejection happens a bit more than a month after protests against LGBT rights took place in Mexico City. Thousands of Mexicans were fighting to preserve the traditional ‘family values and the institution of marriage’, and not against LGBTQ+ rights in general. Thus, the traditional divide in the arguments between ‘family values’ and LGBTQ+ rights remain in conflict just south of the American border.
Homosexual partnerships had permission from the Mexican government to form civil partnerships. However, the recent ruling would provide the equivalent marriage rights to homosexual, or gay, couples as those already given to hetero-sexual, or straight, couples.
In fact, other countries in Latin America have provided the identical rights to gay couples for same-sex marriage as that provided to opposite-sex partnerships including Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, and partially in Mexico (depends on the areas of the country such as Mexico City and certain states), and most recently in Colombia as well.
The other issue in the country was adoption rights, as noted by The Huffington Post. And, indeed, once more, the Supreme Court pre-empted the rights of gay couples to have same-sex marriages as heterosexual couples have the constitutional right to marry, according to
Nonetheless, the recent vote of 19-8 relied on the constitutional right of gay couples to marry with some facets including adoption rights for married couples, which would mean the expansion of adoption rights to same-sex married couples, too. Despite their political success, Far-Left and Left-leaning parties have had difficulties in the past two decades. Latin America remains moderately conservative regarding same-sex relationships. Catholicism, as the predominant faith in Mexico, may be behind the popular resistance to change values that challenge traditional, conservative Christian principles.
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